Massachusetts woman pleads guilty to posing as teenage boy to meet up with W.Va. girl

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A Massachusetts woman arrested at Pittsburgh International Airport in May after months of posing as a boy to have sex with a teenage girl in West Virginia will spend 87 months in federal prison.

A federal judge in West Virginia Wednesday accepted a guilty plea by Carissa Hads, 25, who earlier this month agreed to that prison term as part of a deal struck with prosecutors.

Ms. Hads admitted that she traveled from her home in Quincy, Mass., to Lewis County, W.Va., to engage in illegal sexual conduct with the victim. She pleaded guilty to coercion or enticement of a minor female in U.S. District Court for the Nothern District of West Virginia.

Federal prosecutors said Ms. Hads pretended to be a 17-year-old boy using the name "James Puryear Wilson" in developing an online relationship with the girl starting in 2010, when she was 15.

Ms. Hads sent the girl, identified only as A.L. in court papers, a cell phone and paid the bill so they could keep in touch. The girl sent back nude photos of herself, police said in an affidavit.

After 14 months of online romance, Ms. Hads suggested they meet.

Ms. Hads, who looks and dresses like a teenage boy, flew to Pittsburgh and met the girl, along with her mother and two other teens, at a Coraopolis hotel. Ms. Hads stayed in a separate room, but on Dec. 10, according to the affidavit, she molested the girl.

In February, Ms. Hads flew to West Virginia and stayed with the victims' family from Feb. 23 to Feb. 28. The victim told police that she and Ms. Hads had sex but that Ms. Hads did not get undressed.

The victim and her mother also told West Virginia state troopers that they never saw Ms. Hads naked and that she wore a back brace that covered her chest.

In March, Ms. Hads asked that the girl's mother ship items Ms. Hads purchased for the girl to her house in Quincy.

U.S. postal inspectors intercepted the package and found clothes, notebooks, toys, a cell phone and other items that revealed the history of the relationship between Ms. Hads and the girl.

When Ms. Hads arranged for another trip to see the girl in May, agents moved to intercept Ms. Hads at Pittsburgh International.